gstreamer/docs/faq/cvs.xml

<sect1 id="chapter-cvs">
  <title id="title-cvs">Building GStreamer from CVS</title>
  <qandaset>

    <qandaentry>
      <question id="cvs">
        <para>
I ran autogen.sh, but it fails with something like this:
<programlisting>
+ running aclocal -I m4 -I common/m4 ...
aclocal: configure.ac: 8: macro `AM_DISABLE_STATIC' not found in library
aclocal: configure.ac: 17: macro `AM_PROG_LIBTOOL' not found in library
aclocal failed
</programlisting>
What's wrong ?
        </para>
      </question>

      <answer>
        <para>
aclocal is unable to find two macros installed by libtool in a file called
libtool.m4.  Normally this would indicate that you don't have libtool, but
that would mean autogen.sh would have failed on not finding libtool.
        </para>
        <para>
It is more likely that you installed automake (which provides aclocal) in
a different prefix than libtool.  You can check this by examining in what
prefix both aclocal and libtool are installed.
        </para>
        <para>
You can do three things to fix this :
<orderedlist>
<listitem><para>install automake in the same prefix as libtool</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>force use of the automake installed in the same prefix as libtool
by using the --with-automake option</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>figure out what prefix libtool has been installed to and point
aclocal to the right location by running
<programlisting>
export ACLOCAL_FLAGS="-I $(prefix)/share/aclocal"
</programlisting>
where you replace prefix with the prefix where libtool was installed.
</para></listitem>
</orderedlist>
       </para>
      </answer>
    </qandaentry>
  </qandaset>
</sect1>